Blog Post

SEO Versus Social Media

Some of you may find our point of view somewhat controversial, however our objective is to educate and as a full service web design and marketing company serving the Nanaimo area since 1995 and Vancouver since 2010 we have considerable experience and awards in new media marketing.

We see it every day; the entire buzz is social media, however the bare roots of online marketing are being ignored, all to get on the social media band wagon. Don’t get us wrong some social media can be effective; this article is to help you consider what will work and what won’t. Considering the economy we see too many business people spending exorbitant amounts of time on social media with very little return if any.

There are now hundreds of thousands if not millions of so called social media marketers, gurus, experts you name it. It is this group that promotes social media the most, ironically to sell their own services. Ask any of them to give just 5-6 examples of PAID successful marketing campaigns on social media. By paid we mean following all the rules and regulations of Face Book to put on a contest, not an illegal means to get people to like you. Check their own social media channels, how many fans, what are they saying, is the information useful. If they live in a smaller city some will have thousands of friends BUT fans can be bought. Yes, with only 150 dollars you can get a third world country to get you a bunch of fake fans. It doesn’t work as there is no relationship and the names look like foreigners so ask that question as well, where did the fans come from?

Some even say Twitter has all you need to know about any given company, why bother going to a website. You’ve got to be kidding, try yourself to get all needed information from a Twitter feed. In my examples of the buying process below like I’m going to go to Twitter to get all the specs on a new big screen TV. And I’m going to learn all this with 140 character tweets? Read the rest of this article and you may be surprised.

Website Design and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Evaluation

Think carefully as to what motivated you to buy a product or service in the last six months. Most people go to a search engine first to research.

Here are two examples that happened to me in the last couple of weeks. Scenario one, my high def TV quit working on the weekend, it was already four years old and it didn’t make sense to fix. I knew the exact specs, a 50” plasma or LCD with three HDMI inputs to cover my other components. I used my smart phone as I was out on the deck and wanted to get this task completed quickly so my weekend wasn’t consumed with looking for a new TV. I typed “50” HDMI TV specials Nanaimo”. In only minutes I found several bargains and ended up buying one for only $ 499.00. From the time I discovered the problem to researching for a bargain and going to pick up the TV took about one hour. I didn’t have time nor did I feel it useful to scour a bunch of Twitter or Face Book postings when it was much easier to simply type what I wanted and find the bargain. Would I really want to go through tens of Tweets and try to interpret the 140 character discussions to find my bargain?

Over the weekend we took care of our four year old granddaughter that seems to be obsessed with bugs. I used the exact same methods as for the TV but different search words. In less than five minutes I found a store through search engines that have a nice little 30X microscope for my granddaughter to look at bugs. The rest of my weekend was trying to kill flies or wasps so she could look at them real close.

Think about your own receptors that led you to buying a service or item as we would love to hear your own stories.

In all cases the websites found were professional, easy to use, mobile compatible and solved my problem with very little time.

It seems that so many business people are very quick to spend huge amounts of time tweeting and posting yet the return is very small. A good quality website that is being found in search engines for the products and/or service you supply should always be foremost BEFORE you jump into the social media band wagon.

Is anyone concerned Face Book shares have plummeted to half since its first public offerings? Seems to me it’s the same hype we are discussing in this Blog.

The next subject covers two types of lead generation that ties into web design and social media comparisons.

Interruptive or Inbound Marketing – You Decide which is Best

Interruptive marketing is pretty well what it implies, interruptive. Whether on TV, Bill Boards, Radio, Magazines or even our own Face Book we see advertising everywhere. People don’t generally want to be disturbed when their watching a favorite program or reading a magazine flipping through the first 8-10 pages of advertising before they finally get to the reading material of interest. This is interruptive.

Then considering my own buying habits and the two examples I knew exactly what I was looking for and was seeking a company that could fulfill my needs. This is “inbound marketing” where the buyer is truly looking for a solution and is not bombarded with advertising.

Try this exercise yourself; take a fictional product and/or a real product or service you are interested in. Try search engines first and then try using Twitter or Face Book to find the same solutions.

Conclusion – Website Design with SEO versus Social Media

Look over your own website design very carefully, compare with competitors from ease of use and solving the problem. Then try to find your own business by typing your own products or services keywords in a search engine. Do not type your own company; it’s the new customers that don’t know you that you want to attract as well as existing customers.

If your website is making money and found easily in search engines now social media may be a consideration. Don’t just jump on all of them, create one channel at a time and work them building relationships.

The last consideration is who owns your intellectual online property? If it’s your website it’s 100% yours, all traffic you generate from blogging to adding what’s new articles and new content all goes to your benefit. You never really own the data on public social media channels, Face Book and similar crawl every post on your channel and monetize it for themselves. Even your own competitors can show up while in Face Book if they are advertisers. Imagine promoting your Face Book channel all the time to find out a competitor is targeting your services through paid campaigns and a potential costumer notices the competition and goes with them. You can’t control that in social media nor do you own the data, they farm it for all that’s its worth.

We want to conclude with a positive as there are situations where social media can be helpful, however look in your own backyard first before jumping on the band wagon, it’s time consuming and not always profitable. We’d love to hear and share your stories on either web design success and/or social media. We have found that retail can be beneficial for social media PROVIDING your website and online search engine exposure is already top ranked.

If you have a question or comment, please contact us, all feedback is happily received.

Sorry, again intellectual properties are never 100%, unless it is clearly specified in a contract. It is much like buying software, you can own a copy of Microsoft Word but you do not own the intellectual properties. If you took the software code and used it another product – Microsoft would be all over it. Giving the intellectual properties for a web site is a dangerous proposition as it also gives them the right to sue you for copyright infringement if you ever used portions of your code in another project. Slippery slope my friend- be careful.

I generally use a contract where I specify that the look ( graphics ) and content is 100% owned by the customer and any code in presenting their website is 100% retained by me. This also protects you from being sued by third parties that include you as the publisher. For instance if a customer sells a product that claims to cure Cancer on their website and harms someone in anyway- you have already taken yourself out of the picture by making them 100% responsible for content. This has happened to me in the past. I had a vitamin company that made scientific claims and studies that were completely made up. my lawyer’s first question to me was “Have you made any suggestions or talked about content in writing?” He said that by suggesting any writing or re-writing of copy, can make you a fact checker and puts some or all of the liability on you.

I now only consult on content from a marketing ( SEO ) position and never ask or make any suggestions to actual facts. I actually have this written into my contract.

Oh by the way- I do agree with your points about Social Media. Not sure why people accept business bullying their way into Facebook, Twitter etc. The word social is actually the opposite of business and should have it’s own place. With that said – If your business is a social business then go for it. It must be tough for toilet companies or hygiene products to get liked on Facebook. But easier for a night club or photography site etc.